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Ice business red hot in dog days of summer

The hottest weekend of the summer was also one of the busiest at the Iceman, thanks in part to the Pan Am Games athletes’ village.

Michael Aguilar loads ice into a freezer at the busy Iceman headquarters on Adelaide St. W. on Sunday, July 19. (Melissa Renwick / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Sean Bruno-Teves bags ice at the Iceman headquarters on Adelaide St. W.. Once the ice is bagged, it is shipped out to various locations within the city almost every hour. The ice machines at the warehouse produce around 10,000 pounds of ice a day. (Melissa Renwick / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Geoffrey VendevilleStaff Reporter

Mon., July 20, 2015

The hottest weekend of the summer was also one of the busiest at the Iceman.

On a muggy Sunday afternoon, when the temperature hit the low 30s, the phones were buzzing every few minutes at the Adelaide St. W. office of the ice distributor. Restaurants, bars, private parties and, especially, Pan Am Games venues all needed to cool off.

On days as hot as last weekend, the Iceman moves about 60 tons — 120,000 pounds — of ice per day, according to head of finance Jake Silva.

His father, John, co-owns the business. He started it in the early 1980s out of the back of his father’s store, Silva’s Variety, on Queen and Markham Sts. Now, they produce 10 pallets of ice a day, which weigh about two tons each. They buy the rest of their ice bags from Arctic Glacier, the largest producer in Canada.

They send 5 to 10 skids of ice a day to Pan Am venues, Silva said.

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“In the spring we try to prepare the best we can. Depending on the weather, it can get really busy. We have to be ready for anything.”

On the dispatch desk, 30-year-old Michael Aguilar spent most of his time glued to the phone, giving directions to the Iceman’s fleet of 10 delivery trucks.

“All I hear now is Cherry Street, Cherry Street, Cherry Street,” he said, referring to the Pan Am athletes’ village in the West Don Lands.

Before he was hired this summer, he didn’t know there was such a demand for ice. Nor was he prepared for all the puns he would have to endure. “People always say it must be a pretty chill place to work, as if I’ve never heard that one before.”

Some of his friends have gotten into the habit of quoting some of .Mr. Freeze’s lines from Batman & Robin. (“All right, everyone chill!” the movie villain played by Arnold Schwarzenegger says in one scene, brandishing his giant freeze gun.)

Even under pressure, Gadbois kept his cool on the phone. While he fielded calls, driver Evan Wheatly, 25, prepared for his ninth and last delivery of the day, an order of 1,190 lbs of ice for Pan Am Equestrian Park in Caledon.

Wheatly had to make the delivery by 9:30 p.m. He zipped along a mostly traffic-free highway and reached his destination with an hour to spare.

After the security checkpoint, he drove the heavy-duty refrigerated truck through a maze of fenced-in roads and pulled up outside the caterers’ tent.

He opened the back and pushed a dolly holding a ton of bagged ice to the edge of the truck’s loading gate. The cargo teetered precariously on the platform. Then its plastic wrapping burst under its own weight and half the bags spilled onto the ground.

There was no harm done, though, except to a couple of bags that split open. Wheatly and a Pan Am volunteer transferred the rest into an ice machine.

It all seemed like a lot of effort for 45 bags of frozen water. Then again, it might not seem so for your next order of a whisky on the rocks.

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